Capitalizing 'atheism'

This is not a particularly deep thread, but it seems to me that the prevalence of 'Atheism' with a capital 'A' is growing. 'Atheism' is a common noun, not a proper noun, so in English it should not normally be capitalized (unless it is at the beginning of a sentence). However, for a time I used to hear people referring to 'Big A Atheism' implying additional values ascribed to the term beyond mere lack of belief.

For those who capitalize, is this just just an odd typing habit, or are you implying something by writing 'Atheism' instead of 'atheism'? If the latter, what is your intended meaning?

For the record, I doesn't matter to me that people use one over the other; it's just a point of curiosity as to why. Personally, I prefer it as a common noun indicating nothing more than one very simple statement of disbelief in deities.

The main argument I've heard for this is that "atheist" is not a proper noun and therefore it is grammatically incorrect to use a capital A for atheist unless it is at the start of a sentence, same goes for vegetarians, feminists, even theist and deist are not capitalised in the middle of a sentence.

Why is the word "I" capitalized and not words like "me" or "my" or "mine"?

0-8242-0745-9) says: "~I~ pron. 1137 i; later I (about 1250, in The Story of Genesis and Exodus); developed from the unstressed form of Old English (about 725) ic singular pronoun of the first person (nominative case). Modern and Middle English I developed from earlier i in the stressed position. I came to be written with a capital letter thereby making it a distinct word and avoiding misreading handwritten manuscripts. In the northern and midland dialects of England the capitalized form I appeared about 1250. In the south of England, where Old English ic early shifted in pronunciation to ich (by palatalization), the form I did not become established until the 1700's (although it appears sporadically before that time)."

Sometimes the English Language is not so precise, and certain traditions just come along from repetitive usage. So by the logic I guess you can write "atheist" in capital and say its easier on the eyes to read "Atheist" than "atheist".

Most times when they teach the capitalization rules in English, they give you a laundry list of rules, but I had one teacher who said, look, it's really just two rules and one exception, proper nouns, and first letters of sentences. That was rare by the way, for someone to essentialize rather than just throw a laundry list at you.

An exception in English? I'm bowled over. I don't know how to process that! ;)

Sometimes an exception just a tradition, which may be stupid enough. Sometimes it's just plain stupid, pure and simple. Example: "Mr." gets a period after it because it's an abbreviation for "Mister," but "Ms. is just a title invented for women wanting something that didn't reveal their marital status. There is absolutely no grammatical reason requiring Ms. to have a period other than the stipulation that this has become a tradition.

John 10:35 "If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken". Makes perfect sense once you read into it whatever you want it to mean. Thank god for the bible.

No mater how you dice it, Atheism is a belief system. It just happens to be one that prioritizes skepticism above belief. Personally, I capitalize Atheism to stress it. To point out to others that, to me, Atheism is just as important as Christianity is to Christians.

As an atheist, I do think that it's counterintuitive and demonstrably wrong for atheists to say atheism isn't a belief, but at the same time a system implies more than a belief that theism is wrong. A system is...

A set of connected things or parts forming a complex whole, in particular" (source)

I don't see a system. Also, you'll find that if every atheist explained what they mean by atheism, you'd here different explanations or definitions but all with one thing in common. No god/God.